” In a sign that it may one day open up to the western world, North Korea has gradually shifted a lot of its language training away from Chinese and Russian towards English. I asked one student what he hoped to do with his language skills. ” I hope to achieve speaking English so that I can go abroad and do some business, because I want to be a businessman”, he told me. Another said he was going to be a diplomat. They seemed at the moment anyway, quite willing to engage with the outside world.”

Is there any country in the world where speaking good English is not a must? Is there any country in the world where Good English is the passport to success? Even China - and today lots of American students are being taught Mandarin - has made English a top priority, and focussed lots of resources to achieving this goal.

Good English has provided India the cutting edge in the BPO and offshoring markets so far. But if we dont watch out, we will be overtaken by other countries.

Once more, Tharoor is left bleating to anyone who will listen, that they have misunderstood him. So, what’s the truth? What does the word interlocutor mean?

I consulted two good dictionaries and here’s what they said:

” Interlocutor : a person who takes part in a conversation or dialogue”

” Interlocutor : a person who takes part in a conversation”.

So, the Saudi role envisaged by Tharoor was mere participants in a conversation, not as mediators or something else.

So, how to solve this problem ? Could Tharoor hand out texts of his speeches , with the dictionary meaning of complex words included in parentheses so that his meaning is clear?

Or could he not use what my American friends call three dollar words, and instead use simpler language. Couldnt he say that Saudi Arabia are good people to talk to, because they have a friendly relationship with Pakistan?

Alternatively he could do all his speeches in Malayalam, without any fear of being misunderstood! After all, you first have to be understood, before any mis- can creep in.

What a terrible shame! Why should so many students have this much difficulty with the English paper? It means that the system has failed them. If English were taught from early on, and taught well, it would be a scoring subject, not one to be feared.

Everywhere we can see signs that the educational system is not geared to teaching English in the right way. This at a time, when we see signs that command over English is essential for success in the 21st century.

We have the answer, and we must take it to the powers that be. Linguaphone with Eyespeak will help make such flying squads of invigilators a thing of the past.

In an ambitious plan to bring tribal children into the mainstream, the state government will start dedicated English medium schools in 16 tribal districts in the state from the next academic year.

The Tribal Development Minster Babanrao Pachpute said the government expects about a lakh students to benefit from the project.

The Centre has given a grant of Rs 36 crores for such schools.

It is wonderful that the State Government has taken this initiative. Proof that command over the English language is recognized as essential even in the most backward and rural areas of India.

The need to improve students’ English is felt in every part of the country. Linguaphone Children’s English would be a very valuable resource for the Primary School Curriculum, and  a Linguaphone 21 with Eyespeak Lab would give the students global quality Spoken English.

Bravo Maharashtra. 

The interschool circuit, once dominated by schools like Shardashram, Balmohan, Sule Guruji, all from the Dadar-Shivaji part area has now moved beyond.

While Shardashram’s marathi medium wing didn’t even play in the elite league this year, their English medium was knocked out in the first round. Sadanand Gavli, the administrative manager of Shardashram, says that the era of marathi schools’ dominance may well be behind us, as the schools are not getting enough students. “ Increasingly parents are opting for English medium schools for their children. There are a few lower income group students who opt for marathi medium education, but the school has to invest heavily in providing them with facilities and kits”.

If Henry Higgins came to 21^st century India, he would be amazed to see the number of people who “speak” English, and also fascinated at how “interestingly” it is spoken.

It is now one of the great clichés in India that for job seekers to ensure success, it is essential to speak good English. Better English leads to better jobs. There’s no argument about that.

Take a walk down any street in most of the cities and towns of India, and many villages too, and you will see signs advertising Spoken English classes. It is probably one of India’s fastest growing businesses – both as a cottage industry and in the organized sector. And yet, talk to employers and they will tell you of the number of good candidates they have had to turn down, just because they couldn’t speak even passable English.

The need to revolutionize Spoken English in India derives from an economic imperative. It is part of our competitive advantage. China aims to emerge as the largest English speaking nation in the world. Their Crazy English program combines acquiring mastery over the language, along with strong doses of motivation and inspiration. It is a quintessentially Chinese solution. And it is only one of the array of initiatives they have thrown at the problem.   

We have learned some lessons, and gained some insights from our experience over the last 12 years in the area of Spoken English. Some of these may be useful in working out a game plan to raise the prevalence and quality of the English that we speak.

There are 5 main challenges that people face when it comes to speaking a new language:

Vocabulary – do they have a storehouse of words

Expression – do they know how to use those words to communicate

Grammar – do they use the words correctly

Pronunciation – do they say the words properly

Translation – do they think in the mother tongue and then translate.

One of our colleagues created an acronym – Veg Patties, which is the only mnemonic I have ever heard that also tickles the taste buds.

In India, unlike many parts of Asia, English is part of our environment. There is a thriving English press, advertising, news media, brand names, shop signs. This is unlike some of our Asian neighbors where English drops off the moment you leave the capital city.

English has also been part of the school curriculum in fits and starts across all the states, and students have been taught how to read and write the language. Both environment and education have created a base vocabulary among most Indians, which is why so many of us report that we ‘speak’ English in various surveys. The key question is – how well do we actually speak English? Are we able to speak it well enough?

We conducted a TECS study (Test of English Communications skills) survey in some of the top schools in Mumbai to assess the Spoken English levels with students and teachers. There was a Written component comprising 30 questions, and an Oral component comprising 10 short exercises. In order to maintain confidentiality we have not mentioned the names of the institutions, but they are among the well known names in the city.

                                    TECS scores in Mumbai – March 2009

Oral              Sch A %      Sch B %         Sch B %         Mgmt Coll%

                                                                 Teachers

Overall                    38               35                    29                  50

Pronunciation      31               28                   21                  48

Pitch                      75               66                   75                    79

Timing                   66               60                   57                    34

Loudness              69               68                   69                    73

Written

30 questions         49               33                    55                   61

No. of Students/

Teachers tested   910              291                   30               161

The scores are low for the school students including teachers, and even the collegians don’t do too much better. Interestingly, the lowest oral score for everyone is in pronunciation. If we can improve pronunciation, we can revolutionize the quality of English that is spoken.  

We do have some English in our heads, but how come it does not trip lightly off our tongues? Even when it does, the accent is so strongly influenced by the Mother Tongue that it may not be easily understood.  If we bridge this gap, we could make English India’s largest spoken language. The answer lies in looking at how we are taught English.

But let’s go back even further. How did we learn our Mother Tongue? Did we ever go to classes, or learn it formally? No, we learned it at home, listening to our family members speaking it. We built up our vocabulary, began to learn pronunciation, intonation, and usage long before we started to speak.

On the other hand, we have learned English as a subject in the classroom, rather than as a language. We call it the Other Tongue method.

Mother Tongue Method                           Other Tongue Method

(Learning a Language)                             (Learning a Subject)

Listen                                                              ABCs and reading

Understand                                                    Writing

Speak                                                             Grammar

                                                                        Speaking

Our teachers have largely been competent at teaching reading, writing and grammar in English, much of it by rote. Speaking is another question altogether. In most cases, the teachers themselves don’t speak the language too well. This is also true for a lot of foreign language education in India. Our school or college French is excellent in everything except asking for directions in Paris. Of course, this does not include the excellent efforts by the Alliance Francaise, or Max Mueller Bhavan.

To transform the way English is spoken in India, we will need to invert the process by which English is taught – take it from the Other Tongue method into the Mother Tongue method. The first step is giving our learners lots of listening.

What kind of listening? Do we just ask them to tune on to BBC radio, or watch CNN, BBC, Times Now, NDTV or CNN/IBN? Will that be adequate? Or do we get them to listen to recordings of plays – Partap Sharma has done an excellent recording of Julius Caesar- or the famous speeches of Nehru, Churchill, Kennedy, and now Obama. If only life were so easy.

We need a structured Spoken English curriculum that is totally different from the typical curriculum taught for reading and writing. What should the curriculum contain? There must be a clearly identified target vocabulary to be acquired, and the vocabulary must be graded and introduced in a logical progression. It should be a strongly functional vocabulary, and meant to build confidence in speaking English in personal life, social life and work life. It should be a spiral curriculum using repetition and reinforcement to imprint the vocabulary in the learner’s mind. Most important, it should be activity based, with the learner as a dynamic participant in the process – using the communicative method. The activities should be drawn from the personal life, social life and work life of the target learners.

The best way to acquire this vocabulary is by listening to it. Listen. Repeat. Practice. Evaluate. Improve. And own the language. It is ideal to listen to native speakers - people who have grown up with English as their Mother Tongue. Why? Do we want our learners to speak English like Brits, or Yanks, or Wogs? No, absolutely not. But we do want to neutralize the mother tongue influence on their accent, so they can speak in a manner that is understood all over India and all over the world. That’s part of being a Global Player. We also want them attuned to understanding English as she is spoken by people from other countries too.

How about grammar? It is best learned the way we learned our Mother Tongue - by learning it in context. No rules. No drills. Just listen to good language being spoken, and absorb it. Then, be told what the rules are. Your reaction will be – Aha, I know that, that’s how I speak.

It is important to stop thinking in the Mother Tongue, and translating into English? How to think and speak in English? Immerse the learner in the new language, using the direct method. No learning English through the mother tongue. Learn English through English – a technique that is particularly suited to India, where so many of us have a hidden vocabulary in our heads.

Why is it important to have a structured curriculum, which has been designed by experts in learning how to speak English? This may be a very obvious question, but many institutions leave the curriculum building to the teachers, who neither have the training nor the time to do a thorough job. The same institutions would not think of leaving it to the teachers to develop curricula for the sciences, or maths, or even English as a subject. But somehow Spoken English is thought of as an adjunct to English reading, writing and grammar.

It’s essential to have a good curriculum and ensure a standard quality of teaching. If the teachers feel burdened or excessively challenged by tasks, they will not be motivated, and the program will fail. If they feel that Spoken English can be easily taught, they will be enthusiastic, since one of the spin-offs is that their own English will also improve.

What are some of the hallmarks of an effective Curriculum? It should be based on a well recognized and researched syllabus of the kind developed by the Council of Europe. It should provide a strong working vocabulary – say about 2500 words. It should be interactive full of activities that the learner can do. It should ideally be based on principles of Self Study, and not place an extra burden on the teachers – an important consideration for them and their administrators. 

Finally, who is going to evaluate the learners’ pronunciation and speech? With the exception of a small number of teachers, the rest don’t speak English well themselves. To ask them to evaluate and correct their students is to perpetuate the problem.

Any Spoken English initiative that is dependent on live teaching is not scaleable because there are simply not enough good teachers to do the job. Usually the answer in such a situation is to find a technology solution. Language Labs have existed for years – why can’t they be pressed into action?

The typical hardware driven Language Lab tends to fail, because it requires a teacher to do the “teaching’, listen in to the students, correct them in a live mode, grade them and keep track of their progress. All very nice if the teachers could speak Good English. In fact, if our teachers spoke English well, our students would not have an English problem.

The hardware driven Labs, with the seductive veneer of technology – audio work stations, central consoles, ability to monitor and interact with the learners’ conversations - tend to dismiss the curriculum as mere software. Some audio and worksheet material is provided but the main teaching and intervention is left to the teacher. When there is a good teacher, the Labs succeed. When the teacher leaves, and this happens often, the Lab lies in disuse.

A robust solution that is a curriculum based Speech Recognition software program that is able to do everything that the teacher should – provide model speech examples, evaluate the learner’s speech, quantify the results, give suggestions for how to improve, engage in role plays, and maintain a record of the progress. The teachers’ role is to coordinate, and trouble shoot, but the electronic teacher should do all the heavy lifting.  

This kind of Language Lab can be overlaid on the Computer Lab, if there is spare capacity. Otherwise it will need investment in more computers.

Today, the debate is no longer about do we need command over English. The question is how to acquire it. For policy makers and educators, the main challenge will be to integrate Spoken English into the English/Communications skills timetable, rather than have it be taught as an “extra” or “optional” subject.

If you give the students a choice, there is nothing they love more than “Choice mein chod do”. If it is in the timetable, and there are marks assigned to English speaking proficiency, this is the best way to catch the attention of teachers and students, and make them focus their efforts. Spoken English communications skills should be treated on par with the other core skills being taught in the education system. The new Model Schools have been given a mission to impart the highest quality of Maths, Science and English education, and most states plan to have English as the medium of instruction. There is a great deal of policy support, both at the national and state levels.

In the choice of the right curriculum, there is often an ‘Indian’ versus ‘Foreign’ debate. Do we use Indian or International voices. If you want Global English, it is always best to learn from Global voices, and from Native speakers.

Should the course be set in India, or abroad? We call it the “Begumpet” versus “ Birmingham” debate that we used to have with APSCHE ( AP State Council for Higher Education) who were one of the pioneers in building a Diploma Course that included Spoken English . Eventually the students settled the matter for us. They said that it made the course far more interesting if it was set outside India. “We get to learn more about other countries’ culture and customs. We already know about India, we live in Begumpet, so it is more exciting for us to learn about places , people and situations that we don’t know”.

It is absolutely possible to create a vast pool of English speaking Indians, who can satisfy the needs of the service sector. There are no barriers towards acceptance of this idea. Our young people want to get command over the language, since they know that it is key to their success in getting good jobs. There is consensus both on the policy and political level.

The key issues are to select a curriculum that is specially meant to teach Spoken English, and to select a delivery platform that can teach/evaluate/guide learners, without relying on teachers. Embed Spoken English into the timetable, and the examination subjects at the school and college level.

In the long run, it will be necessary to deal with the challenge at its roots. Make Spoken English part of the curriculum from the KG onwards. Let our children grow up proficient in at least two languages – their Mother Tongue, and English.

Good English has emerged as one of the key factors in making job seekers more employable. As we say “Your marks will get you the interview. Your English will get you the job”. Master English, and master your world.

What I like specially about the Linguaphone methodology is:

1. It introduces you to the most important and useful words of the language beginning with the family, the house, the bedroom, the hotel, the restaurant, numbers, money etc. This enables the student to carry on a simple conversation in daily life.
2. The use of the recorded tape gives the student a good foundation in pronunciation and this makes a positive impression on listeners.

I still remember the day I arrived in Germany. The rector of the institution where I had gone for a few days said to me, as soon as I had said my first sentence in German: ” Where did you learn German? You speak so correctly”.

Bosco Penha
Auxiliary Bishop
Archdiocese of Bombay

Of course, Indians have a sense of humor. Its just that we dont have it in English. For many Indians, the intricacies of idiom, usage, deft twists of words, puns and other verbal sleight of hand are like Greek and Latin, when the language is English.

I thought that Shashi had done a smart play with words ‘ cattle class’ and ’sacred cows’. I’m sure he was quite pleased with the tweet as he hit the send button. I also thought one of his critics worked an equally deft if somewhat obvious play on ‘twits who tweet’.

It took the PM to ride to his rescue and dismiss all the controversy as the use of slang, and harmless fun.

You’d think Indian politicians would have slightly more important things to be concerned about. But, that’s the subject of another post.